After the new year platitudes, now for some real-talk.
2023 was, as I have mentioned previously, mostly a good year. It was also a year of working very hard, mostly on a single, very intense, project. The team was fantastic - indeed, it was mostly the social environment that allowed me to sustain the pace and level of effort for so long. Despite many challenges, setbacks and switchbacks, which at times left us bewildered and frustrated, there was a sense that we were in it together. And we held it together, and we delivered. The project was a fantastic experience of the ‘Scrum’ method, in that we were a cross-functional team adapting rapidly to changing circumstances. It was all very Agile.
And yet an important element of Scrum is that the pace should be sustainable. Unfortunately, in our context, our pace was set by the hardest of hard deadlines, and we didn’t have the luxury of varying the scope. So while I was gaining all this great experience, I was getting tunnel vision. I felt ‘resilient’ in the narrow sense of a wind-up toy: if you stop it, it’ll immediately set off at top speed again…
In November, after the best part of a year of running, my role in that project concluded — so of course I went straight into another, even more intense one. And I mean straight in - not a day in between to take a breath or reflect on my achievements. I must admit, I was lured by the prestige of the new role and flattered to be asked. But there was more: after running flat-out for so long, it had become the only way I knew how to work. I’d gotten addicted to firefighting and urgency and crisis.
By the time I made it to Christmas, of course, I was exhausted and tired and stressed. I felt like I’d misplaced my sense of purpose - that I was just pretending to want things. Fortunately, when I stepped away from my desk I had a festive script to follow: I cooked elaborate meals, went for wintery walks, read books by the fire, and I ate and drank lots. It took me at least ten days away from work to actually calm down and relax properly, and only then did I start recharging.
So now I feel able to look back on 2023 and drag some lessons out of it. Professionally, for me, it was a successful year. The wider team on my project won a big internal award, and I personally got a ton of glowing feedback. On the other hand, over the year, I’d allowed sustained stress and fatigue to impact my mental wellbeing and my friendships.
I’m now back at work (albeit still not quite at full strength, thanks to a lingering cough). Reflecting on the above, some lessons I can extract for myself might be:
Take more regular days off, especially after I finish an intense project.
Find the middle ground between ‘off’ and ‘on’. Sometimes this involves stepping back even if an output is imperfect (so hard to do, but a useful skill for survival)
…and I’m sure I’ll add to the list over the coming weeks. For now, I’ll focus on growing and evolving my sense of self and purpose along with my skills and responsibilities. 2023 was a year of labour — productive. but effortful. For 2024, an adjective I’d like to aim for is ‘flourishing’: growth, but relaxed, free and perhaps more intuitive.